In an interview with CVG, PlayStation Europe's Jim Ryan said that Sony's stable of first- and second-party exclusives, as well as exclusive and early content in games like Destiny, is enough to make the PlayStation 4 compelling.

"So do we feel the need to go out and buy outright exclusivity? Probably not," Ryan said. "You saw last night [at Sony's press conference] that before the media briefing we showed updated videos of games that we had revealed at E3. That's because we wanted to keep the show itself full of new, fresh things. We think that gave us a good, strong, convincing portfolio of exclusive stuff, and we're happy with that."

But in answer to the very next question regarding independent games, Ryan admitted that the company does essentially buy its way into exclusivity. After talking up things like lighter paperwork and bureaucracy for indie developers, Ryan said that "the icing on the cake is that we will go out and look at a small number of games and seek to help the developer make those games as successful as they possibly can, and that support can take a whole range of forms. It can take the form of financial support, it can take the form of having Sean Murray from Hello Games on the stage at E3—there are many ways to do it, and we try not to be prescriptive and say 'this is the template you have to follow, this is the path.'" (Emphasis added.)

So basically, Ryan is saying that Sony doesn't buy exclusivity for PS4 games... except when it does, for indie games.

Giving Ryan the benefit of the doubt, we presume his initial statement could apply only to major, big-budget third-party publishers. That would suggest that upcoming third-party games like Capcom's Deep Down, Square Enix's Final Fantasy XIV, and CCP's Dust 514 are PS4 console exclusives for reasons of technical performance or console audience decided by the publisher, and not because of business deals signed with Sony. We've reached out to Sony to clarify its position on this matter and will update this article if we hear back.

Update (August 18): A Sony representative provided Ars Technica with the following statement:

"We evaluate every opportunity to bring great experiences to gamers, including outright exclusivity, timed exclusives and exclusive content. We believe in being flexible, looking at various options and creating unique experiences for gamers."

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.